Category Archives: British Brides

When a bride and groom meet at a tattoo studio, you just know that’s going to become part of their wedding too! Sadie and Ped met when she booked him to do her first big tattoo. They were married in March and wanted their wedding to be like their best day out out together. That meant a ceremony with just the two of them, good food and getting inked!

”We just planned on having a relaxed day,” said Sadie. “We didn’t have a theme or any expectations of the day except that we would each end up married to our best friend! No-one knew we were planning on getting married, we kept the whole day a secret! We had no guests. The day was the ceremony followed by a pit stop at a tattoo studio. We were back at our hotel by 2pm in bed with food and Netflix! We then went out to eat in the evening, wearing our normal clothes and it just being our little secret we got married less than 10 hours earlier. it felt really special.”

Michaela and Dave both love going out and dancing and so wanted their wedding to have that same feel. Their theme was ‘ A Disco Love Kid’s Party’ full of entertaining things to bring people together. They had face painting, a photo booth, colouring in and pick and mix! Ultimately, they wanted the wedding to feel like the most fun night out you can imagine and all in honour of their love.

They decided to only keep traditions that suited them. They had no sit down meal, the only speech was made by themselves, Michaela’s mum and dad walked her down the aisle and they both took each other’s names.

“I was so nervous before the ceremony that I couldn’t remember my age to tell the officiant,” Michaela laughed. “In our vows we included everything we felt was important for our lives together. We also added the last sentence which is what Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt say to each other on Parks and Recreation as they are our couple goals… ‘I love you and I like you’. I walked into the Scala choir version of Teenage Dirtbag which means a lot to me since we were both misfit teenagers who feel lucky to have met each other and fallen in love (and mutual respect).”

When it came to planning their wedding, Sarah and Colin had a wedding planning advantage. The bride is an event organiser and owns her own venue! Not surprisingly, Sarah had already been dreaming of her wedding for many years and knew she wanted a big, over the top, extravagant Scottish celebration.

“I wanted it to be traditionally Scottish but also glamorous and contemporary too,” she explained. “Luckily I was given a very loose reign by my husband-to-be as he trusted my vision. He was involved in all the big decisions but let me run with the entire event myself pretty much…which is as most brides want it, lets be honest! As I’ve organised events for a living for many many years I knew how it was going feel planning a huge event – ever so slightly stressful but amazing and fun and magical too!”

Ruby and Lukasz hosted their cat themed wedding party in October but they were actually legally married a year earlier. “We were broke, we’d just moved countries to the Isle of Man and we just wanted to get married so we eloped and got pizza afterwards!” Ruby explained. “This time we wanted a big party to share with our loved ones. Our budget for the party was £5000 which was pretty spendy for us, but I think it meant we were able to spend more on the things that really made it special like the photographer, the venue and the food.”

Although they were already legally married, they decided to have another ceremony that their friends and family could be a part of. “We thought about just having a big party but we decided we wanted to do the ceremony again too”, she explained. “The first time went so fast and felt so impersonal so we looked online for non-religious ceremonies on the Isle of Man. The IOM Freethinkers are a humanist society which embodies our own beliefs about life and spirituality so it was a perfect fit.”

Holly and Laura met on a dating website. Both very shy, it allowed them to get to know each other really well before they met and once they did they immediately hit it off. “The first time we met in real life was at Waterloo station and both of us were ridiculously early!” Holly laughed. “We went to an art exhibition at the Southbank Centre. From there we walked and talked down the Southbank to Borough before jumping on a tube to Soho where we had a few drinks and lots of laughs.”

They were married in August and the day was held at The Dickens Inn in London. “Both of us had a Catholic upbringing and would have loved nothing more than to get married in church but as this wasn’t possible we wanted somewhere a bit quirky”, they explained. “Laura’s friend went to a wedding at the Dickens Inn and raved about it so we went along and instantly fell in love with it. The room faces out over St Katharine’s Docks both ways so it was beautiful and it also has a barn-like structure which is something we had been after, it was also literally 30 seconds from the most amazing view of Tower Bridge.”

Charlie and Chris were married in Sheffield. The theme was robots and skulls and they had little nods to both of those things everywhere you looked.

“I’m not sure many weddings have quite so many robots included!” Charlie laughed. “They’re very important to both of us so needed to be a pretty big part of the wedding. We’ve always had an ongoing joke that he’s a robot. Unusually it was also me that proposed to Chris using a comic book called The Adventures of Robot Boy and Princess Kitty. Our engagement rings have robots with ‘Beep’ and ‘Boop’ on. We designed our wedding rings to have the same engravings on in our own handwriting and a hand drawn robot couple taken a card I’d made for Chris years ago.”

“We didn’t want to be too restricted”, she continued. “Our aim was to surround ourselves with things that made us smile which included tons of kitsch and colour with a healthy dose of robots, flamingos and sugar skulls. Chris constantly reassured me that if it didn’t give me the ‘eeeeee’ cute factor, then what was the point!? Our main aim was to have a really chilled out, fun and informal day so we could enjoy spending time with all our loved ones.”